Are You Smart Enough to Assemble This Brain-Teaser Furniture?

The 4x6 is part of the Impossible collection. It’s a puzzle coffee table/stool inspired by interlocking Burr puzzles. It consists of 24 (4 different types, 6 pieces of each) wooden sticks and a 10mm thick tempered glass top. Image: Praktrik

The 4x6 deconstructed. Image: Praktrik

This VIL1 lamp is part of the Coordinate collection, which requires all parts to be moved together towards the center as a coordinate-motion (slide-together) structure. Image: Praktrik

The VIL1 deconstructed is made from six identical plywood elements. Image: Praktrik

The 1x3 is inspired by a sliding interlocking Burr puzzles. It consists of 3 wooden sticks and a 10mm thick tempered glass top. Image: Praktrik

A close-up of the 1x3 knot. Image: Praktrik

VIIB is part of the Coordinate collection. It’s a double bench that consists of 7 plywood elements. Image: Praktrik

The VIIB deconstructed. Image: Praktrik

There's few things better than getting a piece of furniture delivered and discovering that the grunt work has already been taken care of. But you might actually welcome the construction process with this kit, because it comes in the form of a mind-bending puzzle.

>The side-table require some intense spatial analysis.

A series of furniture designs by Bulgarian design studio Praktrik (they focus on “practical tricks”) adapts famously difficult Burr puzzles into tables, chairs and chandeliers that are as handsome as they are challenging to build. Much like classic wooden brain teasers, Praktrik’s pieces are made from notched wooden sticks that clasp together to form intricate, symmetrical shapes. When assembled correctly, the furniture remains stable without the help of glue or screws. Petar Zaharinov, lead designer at Praktrik, says he was instantly attracted to the Burr puzzle’s shape and low-tech method of construction. “Such structures stimulate intelligence from the user,” says Zaharinov. “It involves him or her in the creation process and makes them more emotionally connected to the final product.”

Each of Praktrik's three sets of furniture—Impossible, Coordinate and Sliding—are named after the Burr logic principle they employ. The “Impossible” line, appropriately, is the most difficult to construct. In order to build the pieces of furniture correctly, you have to leave enough space between each wooded notch, which gets particularly difficult to do when you are down to the last few pieces. The Coordinate collection is based on Burr's coordinate motion puzzles, which require players to move the parts of a puzzle (or furniture elements in this case) simultaneously, allowing them to lock into place. The last set of furniture took inspiration from the Burr sliding puzzle, which requires wooden sticks to be slid into place one after the other.

Most of the real Burr puzzles are too complicated to be directly translated to a consumer piece of furniture. This means Praktrik had to adapt the puzzles to be as simple as possible without sacrificing the detailed visuals that make the wooden knots look so cool. “I had to find new structures which are as simple as possible, while preserving the puzzle concept and its mystical component at the same time,” Zaharinov explains. "The process of designing such practical puzzles in general is just the opposite of the classical design process. I first find an abstract principle and then decide about its potential function and modify it in a way to be useful.”

Zaharinov says the 4x6 is the most difficult piece to construct for most people. The side-table, inspired by an interlocking Burr puzzle, consists of 24 wooden sticks that require some intense spatial analysis and quite a bit of dexterity to build—"Putting the last few elements is not very easy," he notes. Depending on the builder’s skill level and aptitude with puzzles, the pieces can take anywhere from 10 minutes to more than an hour to build. People looking for a real challenge are welcome to give the puzzles a go instruction-free, though Zaharinov doesn’t really recommend it. "There are instructions," he says. "I do not want to be some kind of mental sadist."